That's basically my thought process. The idea is it's a different form of communication communicating entirely through what moves you make. You have to show you intentions to the world non verbally. It also helps you brush up on tactics since all your tactics have to be pretty sound to keep yourself moving, and your strategy has to be pretty good to win overall. That said if I personally wanted to play gunboat I'd play against bots so much handier, and you can start and stop whenever you please. Most of them are better then the average player on this site, and your games with them never have problems with metagaming or multiaccounts. Honestly as a premise I get it, as for why people play them on this site I haven't the faintest I like the talking.

One way to look at Gunboat is simply as a variant. Basically I like Gunboat when I'm in a "Risk" mode and would prefer to focus on tactics and a bit of fortune rather than intense negotiations and precise coordination. It's fun in its own way but I really don't think of them as the same game. Technically it's just a rule change but I think of it as a variant nonetheless.

But assuming it's worth playing, I would prefer to play against humans, not bots. Part is just preference because, irrespective of difficulty, I could never put the same effort into beating a computer as I would against a human. But part of it is that each player's personality develops through his units' "body language" and I don't know if a machine could duplicate that. In other words: would you rather play Spock or Kirk at chess?

Also has there been good AI written for Dipbots? Last I checked there wasn't anything really worth checking out.

I've certainly not seen an AI around.

Gunboat is mainly about finding a way to convey your actions without wasting units, and to build and maintain an alliance despite the lack of communication.

These guys are pretty challenging - http://sites.google.com/site/diplomacyai/QuickStart

But it's not like playing human players - there's no psychology or communication to it, which makes it like chess. Gunboat against human players, on the other hand, is still diplomacy to my mind - not everything can be communicated, but many things can.

@ The_Ned: Think of them as two different games that happen to use the same board, like checkers and chess. Chess is considered a much more cerebral game, but that doesn't mean you can't play a tightly contested, vigorous checkers game.

@ Hopsy: Chess has lots of psych to it! Each player (esp the grandmasters) projects his or her personality into the game, which dictates how you should play. Things like willingness to trade pieces and how dedicated you are to protecting your queen are examples. And, as in gunboat, they can be used against the opponent. Like if you know a player always protects his home centers, you can feint toward one to make him balk, stuff like that.

I love gunboat for large variants, like the world map - it's just too much to chat with so many other players - for the regular map, I don't like gunboat as much, but it's still nice and quick - only have to log on once per turn cycle, instead of a few to send and receive messages.